One of the most talked-about advantages of moving data infrastructure to the cloud is its ability to reduce organizational cost. Commonly referred to as the “pay-per-drink” model, most cloud computing services charge only for resources that are actually utilized rather than the total amount available. Why does this matter? It means that if your business has a slow month and its various cloud services are rarely used, your organization’s bill will be proportionally smaller. Not only that, cloud services can be instantly started up or stopped at will, making it possible to turn off services that aren’t currently being used, saving even more money in the long run. Finally, cloud services typically require little to no capital expenditure to set up. All of these characteristics have rightfully earned the cloud a reputation as a major enterprise cost-saver.

Multi-cloud Management

However, many organizations utilize multiple cloud services from a number of different providers. Managing all of those services individually from their respective provider-specific portals can be a major hassle. This complexity means that many businessesmiss out on some of the cost-saving benefits of the cloud, as they lack the time or the know-how to exercise the level of fine-tuned control needed to fully cost-optimize their cloud. In fact, poorly managed multi-cloud environments may actually end up causing a net increase in operational costs, as Gartner points out. Thankfully, Multi-Cloud Management (MCM) Platforms have addressedthis problem by giving users complete control over all of their cloud services across providers from one easy-to-use portal.

Control Your Cloud, Reduce Your Cost

MCM Platforms give organizations the tools and the control they need to easily and fully cost-optimize their cloud, without the need for expensive, always-on-call IT oversight. Using an MCM platform, an average user could, for example, stop their AWS, Azure, and Rackspace instances all at once with just a few clicks if they anticipate slow or nobusiness for the immediate future. Not only that, many multi-cloud management platforms display the amount of money that would be saved by turning off specific services, as well as show the anticipated cost of re-enabling any stopped services. Starting and stopping is simple enough, but oftentimes, companies don’t want to just turn a service on or off, but rather change its configuration in response to higher or lower demand. MCM platforms greatly simplify this process by allowing you to pre-configure high-capacity services but have them stay idle until they’re needed. When peak season hits and your servers are getting high traffic, all it takes is a couple clicks to switch to that higher-capacity instance and then you’re ready for peak season.

Schedule Services to Optimize Spend

As well as being able to start and stop services with a single click, certain MCM platforms, like our Cloud Pricing Tool allow users to schedule services to start and stop at specified times in the future. Scheduling is a very powerful tool for enterprises that have regularly recurring spikes in service utilization. For example, if a business always has heavy use of their customer portal on Thursdays and Fridays, but barely any use outside of those days, that business could use an MCM platform to schedule their associated cloud services to run only on Thursday and Friday. This type of scheduling ability enables your IT department to automate many of the regular and repetitive tasks typically associated with managing multi-cloud environments.

MCM platforms can be an invaluable tool in helping your organization reign in its finances, and they are sure to be as popular with budget owners as they are with your IT department. Stay tuned next week for the conclusion of our MCM platform blog series, as well as information about the impending launch of DoubleHorn’s own multi-cloud management platform.

DoubleHorn is dedicated to one enduring idea: Improving the world-changing power of Clouds. We’ll continue to advocate for organizations who demand better prices, better coverage, better performance, better service, and Better Clouds. Reserve a complimentary cloud consultation today by contacting us at solutions@doublehorn.com or 855-61-VOICE (86423) to learn more.

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